Innovator Intelligence: Empowering Retailers’ Automated Shopper Assistance

Executive Summary

This report forms part of our Innovator Intelligence series, which focuses on emerging companies that are disrupting traditional retail and fueling innovation across the retail value chain. Each year, US enterprises lose around $62 billion in revenues due to poor customer service, according to cloud platform company NewVoiceMedia.

• The retail churn rate—the share of customers who stopped shopping at a particular retailer or opted out from a subscription service—was 27% for US brick-and-mortar stores in 2018.
• Furthermore, better customer experience yields higher revenues—seven in ten US customers said that they would spend more on a company’s products if they are satisfied with its customer service, according to American Express.
• Linc Global offers an automated shopper assistance solution that automates brand-to-shopper digital interactions and provides more engaging 1:1 communication. Customers can receive updates and answers about orders, tracking, returns and products, and get contextual and personalized recommendations.
• Queries about order and return issues can account for as much as 50% of the total received by a customer service agent. Linc’s automation reduces these queries by 25–30%, which can help retailers cut operational costs and improve shopper interactions.
• Linc allows companies to automate customer experience by allowing retailers to automate around 70% of the customer queries.

See below for the full report.